Mandriva Appeals to Users for Bookend Audio Bits 42
Mandriva announced it is holding a contest for the best startup and logoff music for Mandriva 2007. The winner gets to have their sound as part of the new release. Technical lead Romain D'Alverny told Newsforge some of the philosophy behind the contest.
nothing to hear here... (Score:3, Funny)
A 100% hit! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:A 100% hit! (Score:2)
With Love and Chairs,
Steve Ballmer
do the obvious (Score:2)
The point being? (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, I'm interested to see what they come up with.
As a long-time Mandriva user... (Score:5, Insightful)
Such a minor thing, but so noticeable.
Re:As a long-time Mandriva user... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:As a long-time Mandriva user... (Score:2)
Re:As a long-time Mandriva user... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
No Prize (Score:5, Insightful)
"There will be no cash or any other kind of prize for the winners, except for a hearty thanks from Mandriva..."
Why not at least offer a lifetime Gold club membership for the winner and a Tee shirt or something for the runners up. A "hearty thanks", for someone's creative work, even if it is only a couple of 5 second clips, seems almost insulting.
Yes Prize (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Yes Prize (Score:2)
Silence (Score:1)
Agreed; Silence is Golden. (Score:4, Insightful)
When I tell my computer to shut down, the only thing I want to hear is the fans going quiet, and I want to hear that as quickly as possible.
I'm a little more open to the idea of startup sound effects, but only if they serve some sort of purpose. The Mac always gave its startup chime as part of its self-test routine, as a confirmation that the hardware was good. So if you got the chime and then the system refused to boot, you knew it was a software issue and not hardware. Even if your video card was bad or blown, or you didn't have a monitor plugged in. (Which is incidentally handy if you're ever buying a used system at a trade show or something.) There are some HP workstations which will even play a diagnostic tone on startup if they've gone bad, which you can play into a telephone to a tech support rep, and they will decode to tell you what's FUBARed.
I might even be convinced that playing a sound once the OS's GUI is started and it's ready for user input is useful, since it's a good way to tell the user "okay, I'm here, ready to go!", but this necessitates making sure that playing the sound is the ABSOLUTE LAST thing that happens in the startup sequence. If that's the purpose of the sound, I don't want to walk over to the computer upon hearing it, and still have it churning away on some part of the boot sequence, or loading the GUI.
I think the Mandriva people, as well as anyone else involved in designing an OS, should sit down and think about what purpose exactly these sounds serve, and make sure they're doing their jobs, before they invest a lot of time -- either their own or somebody else's -- in making it pretty. If they're serving a legitimate function, by all means then make them pretty and polished. But I'd rather lose the excess noise if they're not functional.
Re:Agreed; Silence is Golden. (Score:2)
If you have a startup sound then you are far less likely to suddenly be blasted out of it by some random noises your computer is inspired to make. That startup sound both tells you that your soundcard and speakers are working as well as reminding you what volume you have left them at.
As for a shutdown noise, as long as it is fed out to play away without interupting the speedy shutdown of your machine what does it matter? You could argue that here it also serves to remind you what volume you are leaving
Re:Agreed; Silence is Golden. (Score:2)
The best thing is that you can upload your own sounds into the BIOS to give those error messages extra meaning.
Whats up with the Gnome logon/out sounds? (Score:3)
I'm gonna win... (Score:5, Funny)
Login: Arse! Drink! Girls! Feck!
Shutdown: Feck off!
Re:I'm gonna win... (Score:1)
Re:I'm gonna win... (Score:2)
Dont't tell me I'm still on that fecking OS?
Re:I'm gonna win... (Score:2)
Progressive rock (Score:3, Interesting)
Thats great (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thats great - Wow, you admit your incompetence (Score:2)
Mine isn't. I'm tired of attempting to follow totally unrelated HOWTOs about ALSA, ESD, arts, OSS, JACK, portaudio, Audacity, LADSPA, Ardour and whatnot without ever making any progress because the ALSA soundcard matrix didn't mention that anything I'd record would sound like Darth Vader on helium. And while I'm too bloody incompetent to know why - I'm really not alone wi
Re:Thats great - Wow, you admit your incompetence (Score:1)
i just set up a linux comp for my dad and did not bother with the sound because i don't know modules very well, or what packages to pick for alsa. it used to be worse though, especially in the transfer phase from oss to alsa.
Re:Thats great - Wow, you admit your incompetence (Score:1)
if not multitask then "none" (Score:1)
Cool... (Score:1)
Startup/Shutdown sounds? (Score:1)
I find event sounds annoying. At least events that I know I initiated. I'd rather have audio notifications of events I wouldn't otherwise be aware of. Like mod points or something
Startup VOLUME! (Score:1)
Why only one winner (Score:1)
Free Life
Boaz
Re:Why only one winner (Score:1)
Or they keep spare prices for some background contest.
Anyway, packaging the 10 best sounds of the contest in Mandriva 2007 is a good idea we should suggest.
Re:Why only one winner (Score:2)